What You Measure is What You Get.

Einstein :
Not everything that can be counted counts.
And not everything that counts can be counted.

About me.

I know enough to know that at 04.00am it gets dark out on the streets. It has done this for the last twenty odd years, to my knowledge and will probably continue for the forseeable future. At some stage in this ‘future’ I shall retire and probably won’t give a damn if it still gets dark at 04.00am. Until then I shall be out there, somewhere, lurking in the shadows because someone, somewhere will be doing stuff they shouldn’t and then, well then I will introduce myself. In the meanwhile I shall try to remain sane and remember why I joined in the first place and try to ignore all the people who piss me off by making the job more complicated than it should be.

Opinions

Any opinions contained in posts are mine and mine alone. Many of them will not be those of any Police Force, Police Organisation or Police Service around this country. The opinions are based on many years of working within the field of practical operational Police work and reflect the desire to do things with the minimum of interference by way of duplication for the benefit of others who themselves do not do the same job. I recognise that we all perform a wide range of roles and this is essential to make the system work. If you don’t like what you see remember you are only one click on the mouse away from leaving. I accept no responsibility for the comments left by others.

Recent Comments

C.T.C. Constabulary.

A Strategic Community Diversity Partnership.
We are cutting bureaucracy and reducing the recording of target and monitoring related statistics.
Our senior leaders will drive small, economical cars from our fleet surplus to save money to invest in better equipment for our frontline response officers.
We are investing money to reinstate station canteens for the benefits of those 24/7 response officers.
We have a pursuit policy. The message is that if you commit an offence and use a vehicle, we will follow you and stop you if necessary. It is your duty to stop when the lights and sirens are on.
We take account of the findings of the Force questionnaire and are reducing the administration and management levels and returning these officers to frontline response duties.
We insist on a work-life balance.
We have no political masters.
We are implimenting selection processes that take account of an individuals skills and proven abilities for the job. Our senior leaders will have one foot in reality and still possess the operational Policing skills they have long forgotton about and seldom used. All ranks are Police Officers first and specialists second.
We will impliment career development and performance evaluation monitoring of our leaders by those officers who operate under that leadership.
The most important role is that of Constable. All other roles are there to positively support the role and the responsibility of Constable and the duties performed.

Whichendbites

“We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising. It can be a wonderful method of creating the illusion of progress while creating confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.”......Petronius

Just so.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Reality.

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.

Rank V’s Responsibility

Don't confuse your idea of how important you are with the responsibility of your role.

Meetings.

If you had to identify, in one word, why we will never achieve our full potential, Meetings would be that word.

There is always a bigger picture.

When there is no answer to your problem, there is always deflection from the need to justify giving an answer.

With budget cuts still underway at the CTCC for the current financial review period, the dribbles of funds left are to be spent in a last crazy effort to show that every last nickle has gone into making our communities safer and to bring offenders to justice. The last 65p went on something or other so the cupboard is bare before the end of the cut off date and the bartering over next years budget (very much reduced) begins.

The news of yet another crackdown, all highly publicised, to show the world how much we care and the efforts we are going to try to make the world a safer place begins in earnest.

All these crackdowns seem to necessitate shift changes, officer deployments from other commitments including those who would normally find themselves in the hostile environment of an office and are unable to delegate the chance to hit the streets to someone else. There is, occasionally, a small amount of overtime to allow for dealing with arrests or sometimes immediate follow ups to ongoing matters if deemed urgent enough and the Inspector in charge is either sufficiently astute enough to get the job done or reckless enough to incur the wrath of the senior ranking managers when their hindsight decision making processes do not fall in line with the duty Inspector of the hour.

Do we need yet another publicised crackdown to do the stuff we should really be doing anyway ?

The politicos will tell us yes.

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5 Responses

Moving things about, for moving things sake. It gives the meeja some sound bites, and makes the SMT look as if they are earning their pay. Of course, what should be happening is; crime being prevented by good policing and suitable punishment.

It’s rare that a new boss comes in without re arranging everything. We had had a new Flight Commander who actually said, ‘if it was working before, I am leaving it alone’ which he did. with excellent results.

Im not sure if Ive gottis wrong but they mentioned Police not attending 1 in 4 antisocial incidents – it depends on whats classed as antisocial as the officer stated smashing windows and stealing cars – thats not classed as antisocial thats criminal damage and theft (TWOC). If theres a burglary and an antisocial incident I would be sent to the more serious burglary and if time I would then go to the area for the antisocial incident and patrol.

WEB – Everytime we get a new SMT they change the priorities not even checking what actually happening on the street. Weve currently been trialing a hit squad for the local druggies and its working well, luckily we have an ex met inspector who doesnt take any namby pamby crap and syphons out the crap coming from the levels above him letting us do our job, well he tries some of it still gets through.

Uncle John……this has nothing to do with properly recording but everything to do with promising what cannot be delivered because there are simply not enough people out there to do all the tackling of things that need to be tackled. Changes in the way the recording is done allows for differing sets of figures that the politicos try to prove their case, figures going up or down as required.

Big fella……there are only so many to answer the calls. Take the targets for call takers, call despatchers, time for resource to attend after getting the call, time to deal with the job, the next job the next job the next job, get everything done correctly to the satisfaction of everyone of everyone who needs policing intervention and who will judge afterwards through hindsight specs, complete any forms that need to be filled, inform anyone who needs to know by way of intel or event monitoring or hotline or stats or supervisor or officer with ownership of whatever the problem happens to be……………the list is endless with everyone wanting their own essential and vital piece of the pie to justify their own existence and make their own sense of worth mean something in the chain of career enhancing evidence.